Irish Moss -- button bands and shawl collar; and frogging sleeves

After getting a few inches into the sleeves, I decided that I don't like how quickly they're increasing. The pattern calls for a series of increases every other row at the beginning, then increases every fourth row after that. I'd prefer something more regular (maybe every third row? I could handle that...) so that I don't wind up with a sort of fish-belly effect on the seam of the sleeve.

So in the meantime, while pondering how best to do the sleeves, I did the button bands (not pressed yet), and have started on the collar.

I haven't done a lot of picking up stitches, so I have found it a little intimidating in the past, but the more I do of it, the more comfortable I am with it. This pattern calls for picking up 87 stitches over 16 1/4". I divided the front edges into four parts, then picked up 22 / 21 / 22 / 22 stitches in each section as evenly as possible. I didn't get too picky about counting rows and spacing the stitches very precisely -- as long as they're picked up more or less evenly, any little differences seem not to be very important.

I don't have enough buttons in my button box for the sweater, but think I'm going to try to find more like the one above.

The collar is pretty simple. You put all the stitches from the back of the sweater on a needle, then knit back and forth in Moss stitch, picking up two stitches at the end of each row.